


Sami and Kevin Belt it Out

by Mithen



Series: Scenes from a Tour of Japan [4]
Category: World Wrestling Entertainment
Genre: Frenemies, Gen, Karaoke, Snark, Sushi, Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-17
Updated: 2016-08-17
Packaged: 2018-08-09 10:06:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,393
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7797634
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mithen/pseuds/Mithen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sami and Kevin spend a day filled with snark and insults together when staying with a friend in Tokyo.  But when they receive an ominous challenge from the Elite, they are forced to work as a team once more.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sami and Kevin Belt it Out

**Author's Note:**

> Things I moved to be in Tokyo that were not at this time: Sami Zayn, the Young Bucks, and an entire Zen garden.

Sami Zayn woke up on the floor in gray pre-dawn light and was confused for a moment. Waking up on the floor wasn’t that unusual in his life, but it had become more rare in recent years since he could actually start affording his own hotel rooms.

The almost-forgotten scent of dusty straw tatami flooring woke him up the rest of the way. He reached out to run his fingers across the matting. Japan. It had been a long time.

He heard the apartment door open and sat up, stretching, feeling weirdly awake. Jetlag. 

The bedroom door slid open and Sami ducked and shielded his face as Kevin Owens lobbed something at him, recovering just in time to catch the plastic-wrapped object out of the air.

“Darn,” said Kevin, “I was hoping to wake you up by hucking a piece of melon bread at you, that would be a first. Now get up and get some food in your worthless carcass. Juice said I can’t kill you, and I guess that means I can’t let you starve either.” He grinned. “But mostly I just wanted to smack you with some melon bread.”

Sami stared down at the pastry in his hand, then wandered into the tiny dining area where Juice Robinson, their former co-worker and current wrestler for New Japan, was laying out some grapes, bread, and cups of yogurt on the table. “Kevin insisted I get us ‘a half-decent breakfast,’” Juice said, looking peeved through a yawn. “Geez, the sun’s not even fucking up.”

“I’m jetlagged,” Kevin said around a mouthful of grapes. “I woke up and couldn’t get back to sleep. Hey, you wouldn’t believe the shit they’ve got in the convenience stores here,” he said--not at Sami _per se,_ but in Sami’s general direction. “Like, salad with a thousand tiny little fish on it. They look like grubs. Gross.”

Sami wrinkled his nose at him as he opened a cup of yogurt. “Got any plans today?” he asked Juice. 

“I was going to just going to bum around Tokyo with you.”

“Both of us?” asked Sami, wrinkling his nose again as Kevin grumbled around his grapes, his cheeks bulging.

“Both of you,” Juice said firmly. “I want to spend time with my friends and I’m not choosing between you.”

“You could do it in shifts,” Kevin said. “An hour with Sami, an hour with me.”

“That’s very...fair minded of you, but no,” said Juice.

“Maybe I’ll just stay in anyway,” said Kevin. “I hate this place.”

“There was a temple I liked to go to when I was here,” Sami said to Juice. “Maybe I could show it to you. There was a Zen rock garden, and I used to sit on the veranda and just look at it and empty my mind of all the chatter and stuff and just… _be_ for a little bit.” He took a sip of orange juice and a bite of melon bread. “It was really tranquil. Peaceful.”

Juice shrugged. “Sounds good to me.”

“So wait,” said Kevin, “you feel comfortable and at peace there?” He grinned widely at Sami’s nod. “In that case, I’m definitely coming along.”

* * *

“I don’t want to take off my shoes.” Kevin stood on the threshold of the temple, his arms crossed.

“You have to, Kev,” Sami sighed. “Just do it and stop making a scene.”

After a moment, Kevin sullenly took his shoes off, revealing one sock with a hole in its heel. He stuffed his shoes into the little cubicle for that purpose and trailed after Juice and Sami, muttering direly.

It was just like Sami remembered--the wide veranda made of polished dark wood looking over a stretch of white pebbles, raked into concentric circles like ripples in a foggy sea. “Well,” said Juice. “That’s...stark.”

“It’s meant to be,” Sami said. “It’s supposed to be… pure.” He waved his hands vaguely in the air. “Untouched. Pristine. Don’t you dare,” he added quickly, grabbing Kevin’s elbow.

“What? I didn’t move a muscle,” Kevin said as he assembled a perfectly innocent look, just as if he hadn’t been gazing across the gleaming orderly expanse with hungry chaos in his eyes.

“Don’t you _dare,_ ” Sami said again.

Kevin shook his hand off. “You’re no fun at all,” he said.

Sami sat down cross-legged on the dark wood and gazed out over the garden, taking a deep breath. _Just relax and center yourself and--_

“Hey,” Kevin said in an excited mock-whisper, “Juice! Check this out!” Sami heard a whispering shuffle, felt something large skim past behind him; didn’t need to look to know Kevin was skating along the glossy wood in his stocking feet. He could hear Juice giggling and then both of his companions were slipping around on the veranda, and Sami jumped to his feet and--

* * *

“I’m sorry we got you thrown out of the temple, Sami,” Juice said slightly later, looking appropriately chagrined.

“At least _we_ were being quiet about it until Mister Fussypants decided to start yelling. That’s hardly tranquil and centered behavior, Sami,” Kevin said.

“I don’t know why I even bothered,” Sami snapped. “There’s no being centered with you around.”

“I’m not known for my soothing influence,” Kevin agreed cheerfully.

Juice gave Sami a look of mixed sympathy and guilt. “Look, if you want we can split up,” he said. 

“No,” Sami said through gritted teeth. “I’m not letting him chase me off.” He looked at Kevin. “I assume you want to buy some souvenirs for your family?”

“I--yeah,” said Kevin, looking taken aback. “I was planning on it.”

“Well, let’s get that done,” said Sami. “Treating your family well is at least something we can agree on.”

Kevin got a confused look on his face, like he _wanted_ to disagree with Sami about that, but couldn’t find a way to do it. Finally he shook his head and started off down the street with a purposeful stride, as if he knew where exactly where he was going.

As he trailed after, Sami remembered that was always how Kevin walked when he was most lost.

* * *

Hours later, all three of them were laden down with bags full of items ranging from trinkets like key chains and Kit-Kats, to ridiculously grandiose gifts of jewelry and games. Sami watched Kevin’s face as he browsed racks of expensive action figures of unfamiliar characters, the satisfaction in his eyes as he looked at the price tags and was unfazed.

“Man,” Kevin said softly, more to the air than to Sami, “remember that time I couldn’t afford to buy a crib for Owen?”

“We ended up going to like a dozen lawn sales until we found one cheap enough,” Sami said, his voice low enough that maybe he wasn’t even talking to Kevin.

“And now I can buy him anything he wants.” Kevin picked up an ornate figure, almost reverently. Like it symbolized everything he’d ever worked for. “I don’t think I’ll ever get used to that.” He swallowed hard. “I’m finally not a shitty father.”

Sami wanted to feel angry, wanted to remind Kevin that he’d achieved this over Sami’s broken body and lost title. But when he opened his mouth, somehow all the times they’d skipped meals to afford gear or all the times they’d scraped and pinched just to pay for gas got in the way. Here they were now. Here they were.

“You never were,” he said at last.

Kevin looked at him.

“A shitty _friend,_ sure. A pretty worthless excuse for a human being in general, you bet. But...never a shitty father.”

Kevin seemed to chew that over. “Okay,” he said at last. “I’ll take it.” And he picked up the action figure to take up to the register.

Back out on the street, Kevin looked at the skyscraper-spangled horizon as they walked, watching the sun slowly sink below it in a welter of orange and scarlet. The last sliver of sunlight vanished into dusk, and as it did, Kevin turned to Juice. “I’m starving,” he said. “Anything decent here to eat?”

“Man,” said Juice, “I thought you would never ask.”

* * *

The little plates moved by on the conveyor belt, and Juice grabbed five or six in a quick swoop. “Tuna, salmon, squid, cucumber rolls, shrimp--we’re in business, baby,” he said, rubbing his hands together in glee and starting to stuff pieces of sushi in his mouth.

Sami looked at Kevin, who was watching the plates go by with the blandest of looks on his face. “We can go somewhere else,” Sami said, plucking some eel and mackerel from the belt.

“What?” Kevin snapped. “You think I’m not up to eating some sushi?”

Sami gave him a dubious look. “I’m pretty sure I remember the first time you had sushi.” California, 2004, to be precise. It hadn’t gone well.

“Well,” said Kevin, “That was a long time ago. I’m a man of the world now. Well-traveled. Cosmopolitan. The black plates are the most expensive, right?”

“Uh huh,” said Juice, looking up from his growing stack of hundred-yen yellow plates.

Kevin snagged a black plate as it went by, then looked down at the contents--seaweed-wrapped little packages of some kind of lumpy orange goo. “Right,” he said.

“Mr. Man-of-the-World,” Sami said, quickly eating his mackerel. He had a hunch their time here was running out.

“Well-traveled,” muttered Kevin, staring at the sushi.

“Cosmopolitan Kevin, that’s what everyone calls you,” said Sami, finishing his eel.

Kevin looked at him. Then he visibly steeled himself and shoved one of the pieces of sushi in his mouth.

There was a long, fraught silence.

“Oooh,” said Juice, looking up from his plates. “You’re trying the sea urchin gonads? Brave man.”

Kevin’s glare at Sami shifted gradually into a reproachful, mournful look. He chewed with tragic intensity, then swallowed with an effort. “There,” he said in a hoarse whisper, picked up his cup of hot green tea, and drank it all down in one gulp.

“You know what, you really _have_ gotten more cosmopolitan,” Sami said, impressed. 

“He has?” Juice said in disbelief, watching Kevin’s watering eyes and wobbling lower lip.

“Hey, he didn’t spit it out,” Sami said.

“What a man of the world,” said Juice.

* * *

Kevin sighed in bliss around a mouthful of french fries. “God bless the Golden Arches,” he breathed.

“I still say we should have made him eat more sushi,” said Juice sourly.

“You don’t want to deal with a puking Kevin Owens, trust me,” said Sami. “And it isn’t like it would stop him from wrestling. One time he had the flu and was throwing up right until the minute he went to the ring, got through the match, came back and threw up some more.”

“Tore it up, too,” said Kevin. He shoved a stray piece of french fry around with his finger, and Sami wondered if he was remembering how Sami kept insisting through the night that he stay hydrated, how he’d brought him water and Gatorade and patted him helplessly on the head as he’d retched.

Not that Sami was remembering that. He watched the people flowing to and fro outside the windows of McDonald’s in the dusk, and he didn’t remember the past at all.

He was getting good at that.

* * *

They left McDonald’s and went out into the night, staggering and exhausted and staring dizzily at all the lights. 

“This way,” said Juice, and Kevin and Sami followed him down twisting alleys that grew darker and darker. Sami was frowning and trying to remember where they were when suddenly three figures stepped out in front of them.

“Well, well, well,” said the man in the middle, his mop of curly hair limned by the streetlights. “What have we here? If it isn’t Kevin and Sami, far from home.” The two men flanking him chortled darkly. Sami could see the fringe on their jackets.

“I’m sorry, guys,” said Juice, putting his hands up. “I didn’t want to do it.”

“You led us into an ambush!” Sami blurted out.

“He had no choice. When the Elite demands, all will give way,” said Kenny Omega, stepping forward flanked by the Young Bucks. He snapped his fingers. “Get out of here,” he said to Juice, not taking his eyes off Sami and Kevin.

“Good luck,” said Juice, edging away. “I’ll leave the door unlocked.”

“Why would we stay with you?” Kevin hollered after him. “You _traitor!”_

“Now, now, now,” purred Kenny. “Don’t be too hard on Juice. We were just hoping to have a little...fun...with you two.”

Sami put up his fists. “Oh yeah?”

“I’ve already defeated Xavier Woods, and now I set my sights on you!” Kenny threw his head back and pointed at them, pure comic-book melodrama. “Sami and Kevin, we challenge you! To…”

* * *

Sami looked around the tiny room in some bemusement. “...a karaoke battle? Really?” 

“I already beat Woods at Groover Coaster,” Kenny explained. “Karaoke seemed the next step.”

Matt and Nick Jackson nodded solemnly at each other. “We’ve beaten you guys in the ring plenty of times,” said Matt. “But never in karaoke.”

“You’ll never beat us,” Kevin said, apparently to the microphone he was holding in his hand.

“Yeah,” said Sami with a bravado he did not feel. “We’ll put you in your place!”

A few minutes later, he wasn’t feeling so sure. “What the hell?” he complained, flipping through the options. “No Rancid? No Operation Ivy?”

“I can’t sing that ska shit anyway,” Kevin muttered. Sami shoved his shoulder, and for a moment it looked as if everything was going to break down into a brawl between five large guys in a very small room. 

“Look, we’ll take turns,” Sami said. “Just don’t step on my toes.” He did Bon Jovi’s “Livin’ on a Prayer,” and for their next turn Kevin did “Paradise City” by Guns and Roses, and they did...okay. Everything felt slightly out of sync and it was hard to lose himself in the music surrounded by enemies. _You have to make yourself vulnerable when you sing, and that’s just...not possible here._

The Elite countered with some rap songs Sami didn’t know well, so it was hard to tell how skilled they were. He was sweating slightly. He didn’t want to lose to these guys, but if it came down to a vote, it was three to two--and frankly, Sami wasn’t sure he could count on Kevin not to throw his vote to the other side out of sheer perversity.

“All right,” said Kenny, cracking his knuckles. “Advanced round. You give us a song, then we give you a song.”

Kevin gave Sami a dubious look, which was the closest he would get to admitting he wasn’t sure what to choose. “Um,” said Sami. “The Beatles, ‘Yesterday.’”

Kevin nodded grudgingly. “Good choice.”

And it was; the Elite did their best, but the overall range of the song was too challenging. They screamed out the lines in deliberately awful fashion, and probably won some style points, but Sami knew there was an opening for them there.

“Alright,” scowled Kenny as the last chords faded away. “An inspired choice, but it’s our turn now. No more wimping out. You both have to sing this one or admit defeat. And I choose…” He finished selecting with a flourish, an evil gleam in his eye.

Sami saw the title come up on the screen at the same time Nick and Matt both cried out in alarm. “What are you _doing?_ ” cried Nick.

“There’s no way--” Kenny started, but Kevin was already jumping to his feet, grabbing the spare mic and shoving it at Sami.

“You start,” Kevin snapped. “I come in later.”

“Kevin listens to this stuff all the time in the car, you idiot!” yelled Matt. “Kenny, you’ve doomed us!”

Kenny looked alarmed, but it was too late; Sami stepped forward as the opening chords of Katy Perry’s “Roar” finished and did his level best to deliver the first lines with conviction: “I used to bite my tongue and hold my breath, scared to rock the boat and make a mess.”

He sensed out of the corner of his eye that Kevin was ready to cut in. He stopped and Kevin pointed at him and sang “So you sat quietly, agreed politely.”

Sami ignored Kevin’s sardonic grin and went on, glaring at him: “I guess that I forgot I had a choice, I let you push me to the breaking point.”

“You stood for nothing,” Kevin warbled cheerfully, “so you fell for everything.”

Sami charged on, singing about standing up for yourself and being strong, stopping just long enough to let Kevin deliver “like thunder gonna shake the ground” with appropriate stomping, as Sami knew he’d want to. It was crazy, but for the first time that night, it felt like they were _in sync,_ like they knew just what to do to make this work. “I see it all,” sang Sami, “I see it now,” and the music swelled and--just as naturally as that--he and Kevin were back to back, hollering out the chorus together:

“I’ve got the eye of the tiger, a fighter, dancing through the fire, ‘cause I am a champion, and you’re gonna hear me roar!” And somehow--somehow--everything seemed to fall into place, their out-of-key voices making one actually-decent song out of it. Sami got the line about being a butterfly, Kevin the one about stinging like a bee, because of course. And they sang “I went from zero, to my own hero” together and it was _right,_ and all of the rest, all of the stuff about being held down and getting up and brushing off the dust of the past, now it was about the people who’d tried to stop both of them, and it was about how nothing _had_ stopped either of them, and here they were.

_Hear us roar._

The song finished and Sami felt Kevin’s back up against his, hot and damp with sweat. He saw Kenny’s horrified face and started laughing helplessly. 

“Admit defeat,” Kevin wheezed, pointing at the Elite.

Scowling, Kenny rummaged in his fanny pack, produced a small hand towel, and tossed it into the middle of the room. “You win--this time,” he snarled.

“Every time,” Kevin and Sami corrected him in unison.

* * *

Juice had kept his promise and left the door unlocked; they slipped in together, Sami poking Kevin to remind him to take his shoes off. The door to Juice’s bedroom was closed, so apparently he had taken his room back. Sami felt Kevin’s hand touch his elbow as he went to knock, and turned.

“We can share a room,” Kevin whispered, looking a little surprised at himself. “I’m not gonna kill you or anything.”

Sami thought about it for a minute. Then he shrugged and let his hand drop.

“Hey,” Kevin said a few minutes later from his futon on the floor, looking up from his phone. “Seth sent a picture. Cass and Enzo finally hooked up.” He held up his phone so Sami could see the image of Cass and Enzo kissing. “About time. Losers.”

Sami smiled at the excited texts on his own phone. “Looks like Becky and Sasha too.”

“Well,” said Kevin, shutting off his phone and curling up in the blankets, “sucks that you got stuck with me instead of having a romantic Japan date, I guess.”

Sami shut off his own phone and the room was plunged into dimness. He closed his eyes and remembered the feeling of Kevin’s back up against his, of being in sync with him for just a moment. Just that one moment.

“I wouldn’t trade places with any of them,” he said into the darkness, very low.

There was a long silence and Sami heard a muffled, surreptitious snuffle in the dark. Then Kevin muttered, “Me neither.” 

A beat, and then Kevin added in a brighter voice, “For starters, it might mean I’d have to _kiss Enzo Amore,_ and I’m not taking that risk.”

“Go to sleep, you dope,” Sami said, taking a halfhearted swipe in Kevin’s direction and falling well short.

Judging from the _thump_ against the tatami mat, Kevin had sort of tried to hit him back. “Don’t tell me what to do,” Kevin said.

He was snoring almost before the sentence finished.


End file.
